DIAMOND FIELDS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 200, 7 January 1942, Page 5

DIAMOND FIELDS

EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES

Fields equal in richness to those at Namaqualand, from which millions of pounds' Avorth of diamonds were taken, are said to have been discovered at Verneulc Pan, the dried op South African lake bed on which Sir Malcolm Campbell made speed records in 1929.

Whether they will prove 1 an advantage to the diamond trade or to South Africa, however, is extremely doubtful.

The Namaqualand fields were closed to stabilise the market; if all the fields known to-day were exploited and all the available stones were thrown on the market the price would collapse.

Diamond prices are entirely artificial, regulated by a highly organised trade. The stones are worth what the trade "can get for them, and the trade, long accustomed to dealing in the lure of precious stones, gets as much as it can.

may easily bring about a situation which they may live to regret. Any movement which white ants the law rs quite capable of white anting the Church itself.

"This has already happened in Europe. In New Zealand to-day. Ministers of the Grown have become obliged to wrestle with problems which they helped to create by nurturing pacifists in the days that are gone. So also these men of the Church who have been preaching the doctrines of pacifism and espousing (he cause of military objectors may easily split their congregations over the necessity of obedience to the civil law, and drive* a wedge between Church and State.

"Not much notice was taken o£ the theoretical discussion of pacifism, in trades halls and in some Bible classes in days of peace, but the stern reality of the present conflict has supplied the best proof of its impracticability.

Man-Power Tribunals'

"Personally, I don't regard these man-power tribunals with favour at all. There is a simpler and more* kindly way of dealing fairly with men who don't want to fight. The newspaper reports of the proceed-* ings before these tribunals show thafe there is urgent need for a change inr the law. But while the law is there* these clerical critics should respect* it, and not criticise the tribunals* who have had imposed upon then* the unpleasant duty of endeavouring to penetrate into the real minds of the men. "One of our great English posts once described the feelings of ant eagle on discovering that the arrow by which it had been mortally wounded had come out his own plumage, and it might be a gooct thing if the clerics who criticise thecivil law and the administration of justice would reflect upon this pio* ture and avoid the mortification of feeling subsequently that it was they Avho nursed thoughts and fostered a spirit which placed the* Church in jeopardy."